Language, Culture, and Mind.Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer (eds.).

Copyright © 2003, CSLI Publications.

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To Awaken a Sleeping Giant

Cognition and Culture in September 11Political CartoonsBENJAMIN BERGEN

1 Political Cartoons and Cognitive Linguistics

America has a long tradition of political cartoons (Hess & Northrop 1996),dating back at least to Benjamin Franklin's famous call for the colonies to"join or die" in 1754 (Figure 1). This chapter analyzes political cartoons forthe role that three cognitive mechanisms - conceptual blending (Fauconnier& Turner 2002), conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), and cul-tural models (Holland & Quinn 1987) play in them, focusing on cartoonsthat appeared in the week following September 11, 2001.

Figure 1: Cartoon by Benjamin Franklin, 1754

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As is demonstrated by this first example, political cartoons provide ameans of expressing usually critical political and social commentary,through a visual format that may include images, words, or both. Like othereditorial outlets, they both reflect and influence trends in public thought.One particularly salient example is the famous Harper's Weekly cartoonistThomas Nast, who never backed a losing presidential candidate .

We can also see from this first example that political cartoons are alsoan independent source of evidence on the creative use of cognitive mecha-nisms such as conceptual integration (or blending - see Fauconnier &Turner 2002), conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1993,and Kövecses 2002), and cultural models (Holland & Quinn 1987). In Fig-ure 1, for example, the American colonies are depicted as disjoined segmentsof a snake, the implication being naturally that just as a snake cannot func-tion as an organism, more specifically cannot remain alive, without all ofits parts intact, so the colonies are unable to function or continue to exist aspolitical entities without joining together to form a coherent larger organiza-tion. This inferential reasoning can be analyzed as resulting from metaphori-cally understanding colonies or other political entities as organisms throughthe metaphor ORGANIZATIONS ARE ORGANISMS, where in this case, a par-ticular type of organism, a snake, and its parts are mapped onto the set ofparticular organizations represented, such as Virginia, New York, and so on.

Political cartoons are thus a source ripe for cognitive linguistic analysis(see, for example, Coulson In Press). They make use of many of the samemechanisms that everyday as well as political language do. Since politicalcartoons use these functions in a different modality from the conventionallinguistic one, the discovery of the use of common metaphors, blendingstrategies, or cultural models in language and in editorial cartoons can serveto confirm the non-linguistic nature of these cognitive mechanisms. Fi-nally, since they usually address issues of current public interest, it is oftenpossible to directly compare the way the various cognitive mechanisms areused in language and in cartoons.

There are some stumbling blocks, though, in studying cognitive lin-guistic mechanisms in editorial cartoons: First, because editorialists takevaried perspectives, it is often difficult to disentangle the message they wishto convey from the tools used to express it. In other words, if cartoonistsuse different cognitive mechanisms to convey different messages, it is oftendifficult to determine whether the differences in the cartoons are due to thedifferent messages, or whether they are simply different ways of conveyingthe same information. A second difficulty is that, because editorialists areusually critical of social and political institutions and individuals, therebyclashing with advocated political positions, it can be hard to compare the

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cognitive linguistic mechanisms in political discourse with those of thisvisual medium

2 Cartoons Following September 11

These difficulties can be resolved, however, by restricting study to cartoonsthat express very similar messages, and which are in line with public dis-course. American political cartoons in the week following September 11,2001 fit the bill precisely. During this period, their usual diversity was re-placed by large-scale uniformity - most of them conveyed quite similar mes-sages. Also absent was their hallmark criticalness of American institutionsand individuals. Instead of lampooning political figures and decisions - theymirrored the current political discourse

Political cartoons from this week can therefore be used as in informativecase study (1) for variation in how cognitive linguistic mechanisms are ap-plied to conveying a particular message, and (2) as a basis for comparisonwith linguistic expression of the same content. This study is based on 219political cartoons that appeared in the week following the attack on theWorld Trade center and Pentagon (downloaded on September 25, 2001 fromhttp://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/attack/). Of particular interest are the fol-lowing questions: How do these political depictions relate to political dis-course in the week following September 11? How are cognitive linguisticmechanisms used in these cartoons?

In the week following September 11, politicians (and others) respondedto the tragedy using language that gave evidence of cognitive linguisticmechanisms. For example, Bush's representation of the United States a per-son in (1a) is licensed by the metaphor NATION IS A PERSON. In example(1b), we see a depiction of terrorists as vermin through the metaphorIMMORAL PEOPLE ARE LOWLY ANIMALS. (This and other examples of thesame metaphor can also be found in Lakoff (Unpublished ms.).) In a lastexample, the events of September 11 and their consequences are blendedtogether with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

(1) (a) “This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger.”George W. Bush, Sept 14 2001

(b) “We will find who did it, we'll smoke them out of their holes,”– George W. Bush, Sept 15 2001

(c) “This is the second Pearl Harbor.”– Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb, Sept 11, 2001

Since political cartoons in the week following September 11 so closelymirrored government discourse , these same mechanisms were in evidence

in numerous political cartoons. Examples of each are shown below in Fig-ures 2 through 4. Figure 2 demonstrates the NATION IS A PERSON metaphor- compare with (1a). This particular representation of the United Statesseems to modify the traditional icon Uncle Sam, giving him Rambo-likestrength. Notice that metaphor in editorial cartoons is indicated through thedepiction of a target domain entity using source domain images, often withtarget domain labels. We see in this image that a number of the other ele-ments of this metaphor also enter into the cartoon. The economic function-ing of the nation corresponds to the physical well-being of the individual,and the military might of the nation is the physical strength of the individ-ual. Of further interest is a point that there is not sufficient room to explorein depth here: this representation of the nation as a person incorporates, me-tonymically, elements of the individuals in the nation. The weeping UncleSam in the first frame most likely represents the reaction of individual citi-zens to the attacks, rather than some metaphorical aspect of the nation.

Figure 2: Cartoon by Nick Anderson of The Louisville Courier-Journal

In Figure 3, we see a depiction of a particular terrorist as a rat. Othercartoons depicted terrorists as snakes, cockroaches, and other canonical ver-min, all through IMMORAL PEOPLE ARE LOWLY ANIMALS. Again, this is aclear example of political cartoons mirroring political discourse, as seen in(1b).

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Figure 3: Cartoon by Cameron Cardow of the Ottowa Citizen

Figure 4: Cartoon by Nick Anderson of the Louisville Courier-Journal

Our final example (Figure 4) results from a blend whose inputs are theattack on the World Trade Center, and particularly its aftermath, on the onehand and the attack on Pearl Harbor as the other (as in (1c)). Note that inthis last case, the blend is cued by the combination of a familiar image fromone input - the remains of the World Trade Center - with language associatedwith the other input - a quote from a Japanese admiral. A slightly moredetailed analysis of how blends work in political cartoons, particularly howthey are cued, follows in the next section.

3 Blends in September 11 cartoons

Conceptual blending is pervasive in political cartoons (see, for example, theanalyses in Coulson (In Press)). A number of blends were used in the politi-cal cartoons analyzed, including blends of the Grim Reaper (already a con-ventionalized blend itself) with the Statue of Liberty; of firefighters erectinga flag on the rubble of the World Trade Center with the famous image of theflag going up on Iwo Jima; and of a commercial airliner with a bomb,among many others. In this paper, in order to conduct a systematic compari-son of how blends are expressed, we will look only at the most prevalentone, which takes the Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center attacks asinputs, as in Figure 4. As mentioned earlier, there was tremendous uniform-ity in the cartoons, so a large number conveyed this same message usingsimilar mechanisms.

A range of techniques are used to indicate blending in political cartoons,among which are the following: language from one input and an image fromthe other (Figure 4); juxtaposition of two images and potentially associatedlanguage (Figure 5); merger of language from the two inputs (Figure 5); andmerger of images from the two inputs (Figure 6).

Figure 5: Cartoon by James Casciari of Scripps Howard News Service

Just like linguistic blends, blends in political cartoons can displayemergent properties, properties that are not drawn from either of the inputspaces, but rather are specific to the blend itself. Taking Figure 7 below asan example, we can see several examples of emergent elements. First, corre-sponding to the fact that at the time the cartoon was drawn the perpetratorsof the September 11 attack were unknown, the plane is identified with aquestion mark near its tail, rather than a red circle representing Japan or thename of a commercial airline company.

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Figure 6: Cartoon by David Horsey of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Second, the plane is intact, as in the Pearl harbor bombing, but in con-cordance with neither of the inputs, someone in the airplane is yell-ing“Terror! Terror! Terror!”, rather than "Tora! Tora! Tora!", the call that theJapanese used to start the attack. Of course, since there is no correspondingairplane leaving the scene in the World Trade Center input, this must be anemergent property of the blend. A final emergent property of the blend is thedepiction of sinking intact buildings, with smoke rising from them. Whileboth the ships that sank at Pearl harbor and the World Trade Center towerssuffered significant damage before collapsing, in Figure 7 we see a fullyintact pair of towers sinking diagonally. Most likely, the cartoonist wasattempting to establish a correspondence between the sinking ship and thefalling towers, and in pictorially doing so rendered the towers as the turretsand other above-deck structures of a sinking warship.

Figure 7: Cartoon by Steve Benson of the Arizona Republic

4 Blending and Metaphor

Blending and metaphor may interact in several ways (Grady et al 1999).Compared with the linguistic combination of blending and metaphor, theirpictorial deployment allows these devices to be combined with greater free-dom. This is due in part to the reification in images of the metaphoricalsource domains, which can then be manipulated.

Figure 8: Cartoon by Milt Priggee, self-syndicated

As an example of the complexity of such metaphor-blend combinations,let us consider the cartoon in Figure 8. In this image, the nation is repre-sented through the pervasive metaphor NATION IS A PERSON as a stern UncleSam. But beyond this, the nation-person is also blended together with theWorld Trade Center, as indicated clearly by the smoke billowing from hisperson. Since the element that is blended with the world Trade Center is notonly the nation but also a metaphorical person, the net result is that thesmoke has a function both as literal smoke indicating the blend and also asan indication of metaphorical anger on the part of the nation through ANGER

IS HEAT (Lakoff 1987). Moreover, since we see that the nation-person-towerhas an air of determination, we know that the end result in this blend willnot be like the falling of the tower in the World Trade Center input space,but rather its perseverance, as in the nation-person space.

The combination of metaphor and blending in this cartoon is quite com-plex, even without mentioning other apparent complications, such as theuse of a Pearl Harbor-September 11 blend through the caption or the possi-bility that Uncle Sam is also metonymically representing individual citi-zens. While a message such as this one might possibly be conveyed usinglanguage alone, this task would be much more challenging.

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5 Metaphor and Cultural Models

In general, as in metaphorical expressions, metaphorical political cartoonsdepict their target domain elements as their corresponding source domainelements. These representations in both modalities also interact with cul-tural models.

One prevalent cultural model, which we find in combination with themetaphor IMMORAL PEOPLE ARE LOWLY ANIMALS, is the exterminationmodel. In much of Western society, certain animals identified as vermin aredeemed for various reasons such as health and cleanliness to be threateningand undesirable, and are thus justly subject to extermination. We can seefrom Figure 9 that because their source domains are both compatible withit, IMMORAL PEOPLE ARE LOWLY ANIMALS and NATION IS A PERSON canboth combine with this extermination model. In doing so, it becomes natu-ral and irreprehensible that the nation-person should want to exterminate thepeople-vermin, since they are dirty and unhealthy, and it is equally naturalfor the people-vermin to slink into a deep dark hole underground and hide.This particular combination of metaphor with cultural models is nearly theprecise realization in cartoon form of President Bush's remarks in (1b)above.

Figure 9: Cartoon by John Trever of the Albuquerque Journal

Another cultural model, which appears almost as frequently in politicaldiscourse as it does in children's stories and action movies, is the fairy talescenario (Lakoff 1991). In this model, an innocent victim is morallywronged by an evil villain. The hero, who may be the same person as thevictim, sets forth on a long and difficult road of retribution, where the moralscales are righted by exacting revenge on the villain or retrieving whateverhe took from the victim. The villain cannot be reasoned with (perhaps be-

cause he is inhuman) and must be defeated in order to restore the moral or-der.

The metaphor NATION IS A PERSON can combine with the fairy tale sce-nario such that within the community of nations, one state acts as the vil-lain, and another as the victim, and may potentially also be the hero. Thereare moral scales among the various nations, which when unbalanced mustbe righted if possible. Figure 10 is a demonstration of one cartoon (again,among many) that make use of this particular metaphor-model combination.In it, the United States is depicted as a canonical hero and its foe as some-thing like a canonical villain - an inhuman monster incapable of reason.

What makes the cartoon in Figure 10 unique among the political car-toons using this metaphor and cultural model, is that it combines the prod-uct with the metaphor KNOWING IS SEEING to yield a villain who is onlypartly visible, thus only partly known. Interestingly, the artist of this par-ticular cartoon made the instructive choice of depicting the body, where thedragon might be vulnerable, as invisible, and the teeth and claws, withwhich the dragon inflicts damage, as visible.

Figure 10: Cartoon by Kevin Kallaugher of the Baltimore Sun

By comparison with the use of this cultural model in U.S. editorial car-toons, the foreign press often depicted the United States (in Figure 11, me-tonymically through Bush) as a failing, would-be hero. Notice that the par-ticular version of the fairy-tale scenario used in this cartoon is a rather sordidone - the Crusaders are not universally considered to have been engaging inthe just restoration of the moral order, although they may have consideredthemselves to have been doing such. Moreover, this particular crusader ishindered by his inability to wear his crown or to wield military power effec-tively.

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Figure 11: A foreign spin on the fairy tale scenario

6 Conclusions

In the week following Setember 11, 2001, blending, metaphor, and culturalmodels independently showed significant similarities in the political dis-course and political cartoons at this particular time and place in history. Aswe have seen, they seem to interact more easily in political cartoons thanthey do in language, perhaps due to the fact that the metaphorical andblended elements must be reified visually, and are thus available for furthermanipulation.

We can also see how cartoons benefit from using these mechanisms.They are rendered more accessible and their messages more tangible if theyreify relatively abstract concepts like the nation or war in visible and recog-nizable concrete domains through the use of conceptual metaphor. Renderingthese metaphorical depictions in terms of cultural models yields the addedbenefit of placing these metaphorical depictions within the context of aknown frame of reference. Blending them together with other known scenar-ios provides the basis for analogies and comparisons.

These are of course very much the same purposes these cognitivemechanisms serve when they surface in conventional language, as well.Investigating them in the context of separate modalities allows us to fullyrealize the domain-generality of blending, metaphor, and cultural models,and to investigate which of their characteristics are the product of those mo-dalities.

References

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Fauconnier, G, & Turner, M. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending andthe Mind's Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.

Grady, J., Oakley, T., and Coulson, S. 1999. Conceptual Blending and Meta-phor, Metaphor in cognitive linguistics, ed. G. Steen. Amsterdam and Phila-delphia: John Benjamins.

Hess, S. & Northrop, S. 1996. Drawn & Quartered: The History of American Po-litical Cartoons. Washington, D.C.: Elliott & Clark.

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